“Be careful. A lot of people wouldn’t think so.”
“Are you telling me that something will happen to me, to my family?”
She did not reply.
“Tell those people that I joined the Japanese also to prevent more blood being spilled,” I said.
“I can tell them, but they are only words.”
“Does this mean you won’t accept help from me now?”
“I think it is better that you do not come here for a while. The neighbors. They are fearful and they will talk.”
I got up from the chair, the feeling of rejection weakening me. “I understand,” I said. “I’ll see myself out.” I took her hand. “You may think I’m doing the wrong thing, but I made a promise to Grandfather to look after you and I won’t abandon you.”
Chapter Five
Despite my best efforts I could not trace Edward and Peter MacAllister. They had disappeared among the masses of Europeans who had been rounded up into prison camps. Isabel, who had come down from The Hill, was frantic. My father was worried about Edward, I knew, and ate very little. He had lost a great deal of weight since William’s death.
“I cannot do anything; Kuala Lumpur is under Saotome-san’s command,” Endo-san said when I went to him. We heard Hiroshi coughing violently from his office and Endo-san winced.
“May I telephone him?”
“I think it would be more courteous for you to see him in person.”
“In that case I’ll require a travel pass from you.”
“You do not need one. Your document of identification allows you unimpeded travel. Let me have it now.”
He removed a wooden case from a drawer and took out a small square block. He inked it in red and carefully placed his seal on the piece of paper. “That is my personal seal. Just produce it whenever you are stopped. You should not encounter any hindrance.”
“Thank you,
sensei.”
He ignored the faint hint of sarcasm in my voice. “I hope you can find them. But they are prisoners of war. Remember that.”
“I will.”
He stopped me as I was leaving. “Please instruct the kitchen staff that all utensils used by Hiroshi-san must now be separated from general use. They must also be thoroughly sterilized.”
“Yes. Is it tuberculosis as the doctor suspected?”
“Hai.”
He appeared regretful. “What we have to suffer in order to obey our country’s rulers.”
Since her return from Penang Hill, Isabel had been anxious, walking around the house, unsure and angry. We had forbidden her from going outdoors, even though in her cropped hair and shapeless clothes she would have been almost safe. She insisted on coming with me when she found out that I would be going to Kuala Lumpur.
My father put his foot down, softly, but firmly. “No, you can’t go. It’s still too dangerous. The soldiers are running wild around the country.”
News of rapes and disembowelments reached us almost daily. Families and villagers caught in the path of the troops were raped and bayoneted, sometimes not even in that order.
“I’ll do my best to find them,” I said, touching her arm. Her other hand came up and stroked my fingers.
The train services had been restored, but obtaining a ticket required going through the military and the Kempeitai would be certain to compile information on all travelers.
* * *
The countryside appeared as it had been, unchanged. The train headed into a thunderstorm soon after leaving Butterworth and I put my window up. The leaves of the trees lining the tracks were heavy with droplets of rain, smearing the windows, turning the view outside into a wavering, uncertain landscape.
I slept fitfully, surrounded by Chinese merchants who had managed to obtain travel permits, their voices soft as they discussed the economy. The black market was thriving and the Japanese were already printing money to counter inflation. That was the first time I heard about “banana notes,” which were just worthless Japanese money, printed with a picture of a banana tree.
“Aiyah,
can’t even buy a banana with it!” these traders complained.
They were curious about me. I heard them whispering in Hokkien as I fell in and out of sleep, trying to determine if I were European or not. I opened my eyes and settled their questions in Hokkien, amused by their mortified faces.
“What are you doing in K.L.?” one asked.
“Going to ask the
Jipunakui
where my brother is.”
Their faces turned somber. “You won’t find him. The Europeans have been taken to Singapore. Or, even worse, sent to Siam.”
“Why Siam? It wasn’t invaded by the Japanese.”
“Yes, but they signed a treaty to preserve their territories. In return they allow the
Jipunakui
to build a railroad in the north.” His voice softened, like the wick of an oil lamp being lowered. “I’ve heard very terrible things about this railway line. Terrible.” He shook his head, glancing around to his companions for agreement.
“Who will you be seeing in K.L.?” another man asked.
“Saotome,” I said.
The train entered a tunnel and for minutes I could not see their faces, could not hear them as the roaring passage of the train sang in the tunnel. When we came out into the light again the first man who had spoken to me said, “You must be careful of that man. He’s dangerous, with very strange tastes. He is attracted to suffering.”
I thought back again to my dinner with Saotome and the girl who had been presented to him. The sweet taste of eel speckled my mouth. “I will,” I said, and thanked them.
* * *
Endo-san had made an appointment for me, and a military car was waiting to take me to Saotome. Once again I entered the quiet hallways and polished corridors of the embassy. However, this time I was shown into his office, which overlooked a small garden made up entirely of pebbles and rocks. Akasaki Saotome was raking the pebbles, the sound like the mah-jong tiles that one so often heard in the streets of Georgetown as the players mixed the tiles on the tables, “washing” them. A Zen garden, I thought, recalling Endo-san describing to me the one in his home in Japan. The swirls and the patterns created by the sweeping were supposed to still the mind, to appear as the waves on the ocean. I waited at the doorway leading to the garden. A gust of wind blew and a clutch of leaves spun in the air before settling down on the pebbles, on the circular lines and waves left by the rake. “Look at that,” he said. “Like souls caught in time,
neh?”
“I prefer to see them as ships trapped in a tide of stones.” “We see what we wish to,” he said, hanging the rake on a hook. He skirted the rippling pebbles, his wooden clogs comforting, almost rustic, to hear. Once again I was aware of how handsome he looked, but an image, lying by the banks of my memory like a half-hidden mud-caked crocodile, of him licking his lips, marred his appearance.
“I have examined the records of the prisoners. I did not come across your brother’s name, nor of that of Peter MacAllister.”
“They were here on the day K.L. surrendered.”
“It was a chaotic time; no doubt we may have missed them both. Or they both could have escaped to Singapore.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”
He extended his hand and stroked my face. I shivered at the sudden touch and he smiled. “You must love your brother very much,” he said.
I stood very still and he said, “I am very much aware of your abilities. You could probably break my neck easily. But you see,” he gave a soft laugh, “I do not need such skills.” Again I saw his smile, small as an incision, revealing only a thin red line.
He leaned closer to me and I smelled his scent. It reminded me of smoke from burning leaves, so evocative of dusk at Istana that I found myself savoring it. It was so easy to give in, but I moved my head away and he paused, his hand still on my cheek.
“No?” he asked.
“No.”
“I can call the guards, you know.”
“You would not do that. You prefer your victims to submit to you of their own accord. So much more enjoyable to control them willingly than to have to take them by force.”
His hand left my cheek. “You are shivering. I do not know why you refuse. You think Endo-san is different from me? That just because he is your
sensei
he will watch over you and protect you?” Saotome shook his head. “He and I are more similar than you are aware of. He is myself not so long ago; he will become what I am.”
He had clarified the reason I was drawn to him, but I thought of Endo-san, and a surge of strength warmed me, burning away my fascination with Saotome.
“Maybe in another lifetime, Saotome-san,” I said.
“Then I shall wait,” he said. “Your brother and MacAllister have been sent to Changi prison and there they will stay for the duration of the war. There is nothing you can do for them now.”
I bowed formally and left him there in the pebbled garden, among his souls caught in the tides of time.
* * *
In my heart I knew Saotome had lied to me. Truth was a precious commodity for him; he would not have been generous with it. As I waited at the train station, I changed my ticket and hired a trishaw from a row of them waiting by the road outside.
“Where to?” the trishaw-puller asked, hunched over his bicycle, a stained towel slung over his shoulder.
“Pudu Prison,” I replied.
He paled and glanced around him. “That’s not a good place to go to.”
I offered to double his fare and he accepted, mumbling ominously. The prison was not far from the train station but he took an age to get there. When we reached the gates of the prison he turned his trishaw around. “Wait here until I come out,” I said. “I’ll pay you more.”
He rode off into the shade of a rambutan tree and watched as I knocked on the heavy doors. A hole opened and I said in formal Japanese, “I need to see the chief warden.” I held out my identification document. “I am the cultural officer from Penang, authorized by the assistant governor, Endo-san.” I held my breath, hoping that like all Japanese subordinates he would not question the ring of authority with which I had alloyed my voice.
The hole closed and the door was opened. I went in and allowed the guard to search me. Another guard came and led me into the prison. I felt claustrophobic immediately, for the place was unearthly with suffering. As we entered, the prisoners, mostly Europeans in filthy loincloths, held onto the bars of a block of cells built over an archway, watching me silently. The prison appeared to be overcrowded with prisoners of war, and their stench made me ill.
I was shown into the chief warden’s room. Sunlight came in through a broken glass pane behind him and I blinked as he stood up. I bowed low to him, my head almost touching the top of the table, and introduced myself.
“Endo-san did not inform me of your visit,” Chief Warden Matsuda said when I explained the reason for my presence.
“It’s my fault. I handle his correspondence and—well, I am still new to my duties. I hope you won’t report my lapse,” I said.
“You speak very good Japanese,” he said.
“Thank you. I was very much interested in Japanese culture from an early age. I find we have much to learn from it.”
“That is good, for we are a cultured nation. Now, what were the names you were looking for?”
I told him, adding that they were wanted in Penang for their experience and their knowledge of the tin-smelting industry. He opened a thick ledger and turned the pages. I calmed myself and tried not to appear too impatient. He made a sound and his fingers stopped their tracking across the pages.
“MacAllister, Peter, age forty-seven,” he said, taking time to pronounce the name properly, but failing. I had discovered that while the Japanese could roll their r’s when they spoke English, they stumbled when they came to the l’s, inevitably pronouncing them as r’s. And so it was with the chief warden. Curiously enough, with the Chinese the problem was the other way around.
Matsuda glanced up over his glasses. “He was here, but he has been sent to Siam, to the Burmese border.” I tried not to show my collapsing heart as his fingers again picked up speed. “Hutton. Is he related to you?”
I shook my head, hoping Matsuda was not familiar with English names. “It is a common name—like Matsuda,” I said, thinking quickly.
He laughed.
“Hai.
We have two Matsuda on duty in this prison. You can imagine the confusion. Ah, here it is—Edward Hutton.” He read from the ledger. “Sent to the Burmese border two weeks ago, in the same batch as Peter MacAllister.”
“What is going on at this border?” I asked.
“We are building a railway to connect China to Malaya. Easier to transport supplies and troops,
neh?”
“How do I get these two transferred to Penang?”
He scratched his cheek. “You would have to write to Saotome-san’s office. Only he has the power to transfer the prisoners. He acts under the authority of General Yamashita.” The last glitter of hope fell away. “The two people you were searching for are unfortunate. I have yet to hear of anyone returning alive from the border.” Matsuda shook his head. I saw that, despite his duty, he was at heart a decent man and the cruelties of war affected him heavily.
